Budget Watercooling Guide - Step by Step

➤ Chapters
🟡00:01 Intro
🟡01:10 Alphacool Eisblock Aurora Acryl GPX-N RTX 3080 Aorus Master/Xtreme with Backplate
🟡03:05 Alphacool Eisblock Aurora XP3 Light CPU Water Block, Plexi
🟡05:11 Barrow D5 PWM Pump 18W Combo + Reservoir 230mm Coolant Tank + Radiator Adapter
🟡06:53 Barrow ID10mm + OD13mm Compression Fittings
🟡08:03 Barrow Radiator 360mm (40mm thickness)
🟡08:42 Arctic P12 (5 Pack) 120 mm Fans
🟡09:02 Watercool Heatkiller EPDM 13/10mm Black
🟡10:55 Distilled Water +PrimoChill Liquid Utopia
🟡11:17 Testing & Benchmarks
🟡11:49 [Chart] CPU Core & GPU Core/Memory
🟡12:15 [Chart] GPU Power, Core/Memory Temperatures & FPS
🟡12:46 Outro

➤ Parts || $345 Total - No commission on links outside of FrozenCPU

Playlist

||Xenogenesis
TheFatRat||

Items linking to FrozenCPU are a part of the FrozenCPU Affiliate program in which I and my YouTube channel participate. This way you're directly contributing to the channel (with no additional cost for you) and helping me improve the content.

[iconclast]

What a great video. Shows that watercooling doesn't need to cost thousands and actually SHOWS the process of building the whole loop.

[NM-vwxq]

Great video! Surprisingly very few videos showing a full inexpensive custom loop step-by-step. Most are either sponsored, show part of the loop (e.g. CPU only), or skip much of the build entirely and just show some b-roll footage. I also got a bunch of Barrow fittings (from formulamod) but paired it up with Corsair rads/pump/res and EK waterblocks and they all work great together. Also appreciate you using affordable last gen components, Alphacool is also a good affordable choice as well as the P12s, great choices all around! EPDM is also goated in the soft tubing world, if you want to go soft tubing, EPDM is the only choice (I use EK ZMT myself). All the sponsored guys on YT use the latest and greatest which cost a fortune and are not practical for the common person to build with. People getting into WCing are just looking for a simple first build, and this shows it perfectly.

[catarinoneptune]

I love how thorough and step by step you are with everything, really feels more engaging that way and answers a lot of questions

[Mathieu]

Great video! It's strange, but there are very few videos on YouTube that show the entire custom loop process. I really appreciate you sharing this.

[EpicBunty]

I have a dream. A watercooling dream. Clear soft tubing. Direct pathways, least resistance. Ahh...

[jaykkng]

Your voice is extremely calming, video was very informative and helped me alot as it is my first time attempting to do a custom loop. Thanks alot :)

[thenextlevel]

Awesome video man, will take advice from this to build my own and my girlfriends

[WarriorKidd]

Very cool video. I’m just getting back into PC gear after years of just being away from it. And seeing a video like this definitely makes me believe I can do something like this as well. Keep up the great work with these videos

[Cpgeekorg]

While the budget liquid cooling system displayed in this video is very well thought-out, well executed, and the guide extremely well produced, I cannot in good conscience recommend spending custom liquid cooling money when you could easily use that money to upgrade your computer's components for enhanced performance. unless (and specifically unless), you're using top end components, I can't recommend doing a custom liquid cooling loop (unless you're trying to cram a bunch of parts into a really tiny case or something and you need a unified small cooling system or something). for example, the $345 spent on this loop could have been spent moving from a 3080 to a 3090 which would yield SIGNIFICANT gains (particularly to gaming and rendering workloads), or perhaps depending on what's available in your area you could have gone from a 3080 to a 4080 (or even 4080 super)(especially if you were to shop around on the used market). Further, the gpu that you're cooling here is ALREADY equipped with an aio. unless the integrated liquid cooler has failed (in which case you can pick up a gpu with a failed aio on ebay or something for SUPER cheap and this WOULD be a fantastic way to get it up and running again), it's very unlikely that you are going to get any additional performance out of this card by going from the stock liquid cooler solution to the one depicted. and an i5 could easily be upgraded to an i7, or imo better, not buying the i5 or it's board and going instead with a used b450 board and a ryzen 7 5800x3d which uses around the same power (very efficient) and depending on the game, can be almost as performant as a i7-13900. AND because it's a low power chip (as is the i5 shown in this video), it doesn't really need liquid cooling to get the best performance out of it either, in which case, I would go for something like a (preferably used) noctua nh-d15 (which has the capacity to cool way higher tdp chips than either of these for about $110 retail (or about $70 on ebay) or you could go with a less expensive $30 tower cooler such as the aged but very functional cooler master hyper 212 or similar.

tl;dr: this is a fantastic video on budget liquid cooling, but PLEASE don't build a liquid cooling loop if the cost of that loop could be used for getting you better performing components (preferably the highest end components that make sense for your application and budget. also, given that 4090 air coolers are almost universally overengineered (temps on them are fantastic and they're voltage limited NOT power limited so you can't really make them hotter to improve performance) I don't generally recommend cooling 4090's which at the time of the writing of this comment is the highest end card you can get for consumer use.

I'll also note as a pro tip, because those arctic fans are so good and work so well (I use them myself), AND they're daisy chainable (which is a great feature), I would probably recommend doing push/pull (installing 3 fans on either side of that 360 rad) as working together you'll either get lower noise (because they perform better with more of them) or higher performance with more noise if you max them out and because they are so inexpensive, it's a very cheap way to improve performance of a loop like this one. Also as radiators aren't THAT expensive, and if you're running a modern high performance gpu in your loop that can pull 350-450w, installing a second rad at the top of the case ALSO with push/pull fans could make sense as well if you have the budget. the more radiator volume and the more fans you have, the higher the performance and the quieter the sound from the system (because the fans don't have to work as hard to keep the loop at the intended coolant temp. - which brings me to fan curve tuning. it may require added expense (either by using a fan controller with temp probes, (or sometimes nicer motherboards will come with pluggable temp probes as well), but you need to be able to set your fans by the temperature of the COOLANT, NOT by the temperature of your cooled components. particularly on cpus and gpus that have difficulty transferring heat to their thermal solution. (for example, I just upgraded to a 9950x and because of the thicc ihs, the temp of the cpu can ramp pretty high despite being well cooled and the coolant temp not increasing all that quickly. - it hasn't hit thermal throttling range so I think i'll leave it alone, but I've thought a little bit about de-lidding my cpu and getting a direct contact frame which could improve thermal transfer from cpu into my loop, decreasing temperatures overall.

[Rayjockey]

Very useful video! Learned alot and not need to be pricy!, 👌

[purefucknmetal]

Really awesome guide, thank you so much

[jacoblynch]

First, thank you for telling the prices of all of the components number two thank you for showing that it does not have to be an elaborate system with multiple radiators to cool both the processor and GPU. There are so many people building systems twice as expensive as this one that really don’t cool, any better than this one this just shows though that one good decent radiator is typically enough in the end still simplifies things and makes it cheaper

[king_of_savagery]

You sound just like Hjune. Thanks for the video. Cheers brotha!

[Treeck]

Thanks for the guide! Budget watercooling would be a great idea. I've been researching about how to install the water cooling parts and what kind of fittings, etc for a few days. The budget is not really my concern. I could buy anything only if I could afford. I'm just stuck on part where I'm trying to figure out is where to mount a reservoir cylinder. My case is Phantek Enthoo Pro. I have three options. I could try to mount using Phantek's own reservoir bracket plate accessory, or mount on 120mm sideway where 5.25" bay and HDD cages are. Second option is remove a PSU cover and mount on bottom 120mm fan. Third option is horizontal reservoir mount on top behind of the 360mm radiator. The problem is my MSI Gaming Trio X 4090 is so big and its got way past the 5.25" which is I had to remove the HDD cage unless I have to swap the 4090 cooler with a water block so it would be shorter, but it might be tight if I want to mount a reservoir on 120mm sideway that next to the 4090. Thoughts?

[zinamogg]

Thank you for uploading this video. It really shows a good way to build your custom loop without spending more than the necessary. I'm planning to do something similar with my system but I may go with 2x360 radiators (I have to cool a 6900XT and a 7800x3d). What's your opinion? Are 2 radiators really needed in this scenario? This is my first custom loop so I'm not really sure. I heard that with 2 radiators I would have a quieter system and that's the whole reason I'm heading this way.

[ItsBigEz]

Great video, I'm gonna use this as a guide for my first water-cooled build. The only question I have is that if the fittings linked will work for everything? Cpu block, and pump/res combo? The only thing I would use different is the cpu block, I wanna use the heatkiller iv pro, would the same fittings and soft tubing used in the video work for it? Thanks in advance!

[Kavilar]

I used the bykski custom loop kit but this woulda been way cheaper .

[splindizzle]

Its impressive to gather all this for 350$, considering that some of the AIOs are around 200$

[Decembrie]

Ieftin și foarte fain, , mie-mi place👍

[THESHADOW]

Wait... copper and aluminum??
I had read that you should not mix alloys??